


may the porgs be with us

by shadhahvar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Because He Doesn't Want To, Force Soulmates, Jedi, Katsuki Yuri Can't Cook, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-31 22:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18322919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar/pseuds/shadhahvar
Summary: Katsuki Yuri, Jedi, runs off to Ahch-To in order to work on himself, where he ends up consulting a Voice in his head that he's been accidentally complaining to for weeks on how to improve his cooking skills for both their sakes.





	may the porgs be with us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smolkristen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolkristen/gifts).



> Kristen, this is my fill for the Zamboni Roulette 2019! HEre's to hoping it at least makes you grin!
> 
> Prompt: "Food: I Have to cook myself" and "puffins."
> 
> Porgs came into being because puffins were all over the island on which parts of the most recent Star Wars trilogy were filmed on. I'm so sorry for everything else. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I am very casual in my knowledge of Star Wars. There will be mistakes. Exult in them. _They are your friends!_

Katsuki Yuri hadn’t _meant_ to run away from the Jedi Order, much like he hadn’t _meant_ to join the Order in the first place. No one had asked about it, taking a look at his Force sensitivity and the strange collection of accidents and good fortune that happened at his family’s hot springs vacation resort on Aipo’tuy. Just like no one had asked about his control after he’d received the transmission from home, stating his childhood pet was undergoing surgery to save their life, right before he was supposed to present.

His dog lived, but the stress of his anxiety over the incident had gotten the better of him at the Jedi Master Conference, and the speech he’d been slated to give was a mess. By the time it was over, Yuri had talked himself mute, finally remembered his training to shut down all his (inconvenient) emotions, and was running on auto-pilot straight through the end of the convention. His control slipped again that evening, but for the most part, no one seemed to notice, and only his mentor and former Jedi Master Celestino Cialdini had anything to say about it, summarised as: cheer up, next time you’ll do better.

Yuri scoffed, staring at his reflection in a pool of rainwater near his stone hut. Not anymore, he wouldn’t. No more Jedi Conferences, no talks, no demonstrations, and no fear of ending up the underqualified Master to some poor Padawan out there.

Now he was living on Ahch-To amoung the Caretakers, native Lanai who maintained the buildings left behind by the Jedi who had initially built a temple on one of the many archipelagos scattered around the planet. He hadn’t known any of their language when he’d first arrived, claiming he was there to investigate claims about the origins of the Jedi Order, and in the months since his arrival he’s been picking it up steadily, with an accent the Lanai found amusing. 

To his surprise, or perhaps to his lack of surprise, there was in fact an ancient temple of the Jedi Order on planet. He located it with some helpful pointers from the Lanai, getting him in contact with the Caretakers, in the weeks following his arrival. It was before he had any mastery of their tongue, for all he picked up on, “Hello!” and, “Jedi?” and “Watch out for those @#$% porgs!”

(The cursing might be his own addition. He never paid close enough attention to determine one way or the other. He was usually busy dodging porgs.)

Ahch-To was everything Yuri wanted: quiet, remote, and forgotten. In his grand pursuit of erasing himself temporarily from the Universe in an effort to reconnect and find himself through the Force once more, he wanted to be forgotten, so the embarrassment of his own failures wouldn’t haunt him until he did something extraordinarily ridiculous, like become a Sith Lord. Which, freely embracing and using emotions aside, consisted of far too much ego tripping, mayhem, and also murder that he had no stomach for in the first place.

Yes, protecting people was more gratifying. Only could it be gratifying? Or it could, but he couldn’t be angry about the injustices of the Universe. Or something. His head was muddled on all those points, which is what he was meditating on even as he located an ancient temple, a tree filled with improbably well preserved books about the Jedi Order, and the Hole in the Rock that called on every single dark impulse he’d had in his life, along with several he didn’t have, and never knew existed. 

In the face of all this controlled chaos, and the incessant company of the every curious porg roosting around the island, Yuri wasn’t content, but he was managing. Or he thought he was managing, until his biggest challenge yet left him frustrated and feeling decidedly un-Jedi like: cooking. While the Caretakers offered to make extra portions of their meals to feed him, half of their culinary expertise included helpings of ground up shells and small pebbles necessary for their digestive systems. All these were remarkable from a cultural standpoint, as well as a biological one (or xenobiological, he supposed, as he was a different species), but from a person living in the midst of the Lanai and partaking of their meals, it was difficult to digest. He’d faced the quandary of being a rude guest, picky with his choosings of their meals, or cooking for himself.

The solution, which should have been obvious, was not simple. Yuri hadn’t been responsible for gutting fish at any point in his lifetime, and learning to milk the Thala-siren’s that frequented the island coasts was messy, frightening, and riddled with good natured Lanai laughter. He did uncover a seaweed like plant which left him nostalgic for home, which turned out to be wonderful, and was introduced to the wonders of domesticated porgs and their egg production, and found himself helping in the small gardens of the Lanai in return for portions of their vegetables as they became ready.

He had access to food, but he had limited skill in making anything palatable, particularly with the limited access to spices on Ahch-To—or at least his limited familiarity with what was available through trading amoung the archipelagos. This wasn’t supposed to be an impediment. He was probably supposed to be above such down to planet concerns as good food.

In reality, he cared. He enjoyed eating, but both didn’t enjoy cooking, and this was an issue when he was the only one around to cook for himself.

Put succinctly, Katsuki Yuri fell into bad habits of forgetting to eat, remembering to eat when too impatient to spend time properly cooking anything, then choking down his burnt, unevenly cooked fish because he never remembered to eat any of it when it was fresh.

Complaints about his own meal situation filtered into his meditations, in those moments between his strengthening connection to the Force resolved into feeling the pulse of Ahch-To and breathing in time with the expansion of the Universe.

_Burned the fragging fish again!_

_Who knew you could overboil eggs?_

_What happened to the seaweed I’ve been drying to make it flake into pieces as soon as I touched it?_

Such thoughts were sent out into the void, left unanswered as they should be.

Until one day, they weren’t.

_Excuse me, what?_

Yuri jolted forward, flailing his arms and catching himself before he fell off his meditation platform. The sun shone warm on his face, temporarily blinding his eyes as he spoke. “Who’s there?”

Stretching out his senses, he felt the life in everyone nearby, nothing and no one unexpected brushing up against his mental net. 

_What’s this about burning the fish every night for the last week?_

Yuri turned around, movement slow and studied. The voice in his head came across perfectly clear, with no thinking creature around to have spoken.

 _What the hell?_ he said, thinking the words with deliberation.

The pause in his mind ached like pressure on his tongue. Then the voice spoke again. _Sorry, but I’d been hearing these complaints for a while, and I’m starting to wonder… are you that bad at feeding yourself? Is there anyone you can ask to cook for you?_

Yuri stared in the direction of the Caretaker’s village. He came closer to some kind of insanity each day. He might have had his breakthrough right now, over meal discourse.

 _There is_ , he thought, the impressions of various meals he’d eaten with the Caretakers coming to mind. _We’re not dietarily compatible, unfortunately._

The voice was silent, long enough that he must have made the voice up in the first place. Then it came again, almost laughing.

_I see, I see! Were those your neighbours?_

Yuri frowned, brow furrowing. He continued to stare toward the Caretaker’s village. _Were who my what?_

_The ones wearing the white robes and the cloth headdresses. When you mentioned there were people you could ask to cook for you, you sent that image along too._

His heart sped up, eyes flying wide open, fingers digging into the rock he’d meditated on earlier. Piecing together what the voice was saying meant Yuri was not only sending his thoughts to another mind using the Force, he was sending _images_ too. Which wasn’t impossible, but also wasn’t something he had ever done before. These kinds of connections were meant to be fleeting, or else—or else what?

He’d been silent for minutes when the voice spoke in his mind once more.

_Are you still there? I’m taking this as a confirmation you didn’t know you were projecting along Force lines when you sent those messages before. Or complaints. You’re an amusing complainer, though I don’t see why you don’t practice to get better at cooking when you complain about it so much._

Yuri’s expression darkened, his lips pulling down into a frown. An unknown voice talking to him mind to mind, who had been receiving his weeks of cooking complaints? Embarrassing, certainly, but also rubbing him the wrong way. He closed his eyes, breathing in to a count of three and breathing out to the same count, ignoring the blunt prattling of the voice in his head.

When he was no longer in danger of snapping, he responded, mental voice calm and clipped. _I have tried in the past. I’m not a good cook. I’ve accepted that. I eat what I make, and all those complaints weren’t meant for you!_

_Of course not, since I don’t think people generally send thoughts along the Force in order to establish connections through one way complaints. Still, are you willing to try?_

_Try what?_ Yuri opened his eyes, mouthing the words out loud as he thought them. _Letting you send complaints my way until we’re even?_

There was the sense of amusement and laughter again, an almost effervescent sensation in his head. _No, tempting as that sounds. I meant try giving cooking another go?_

Senseless as the question was, Yuri used it as a reason to run his hands through his hair and step away from the rock he was not using for meditation. He needed a new stone. A better stone. One closer to the cliffs on the island, perhaps, as long as it wasn’t close to where the porgs also nested.

 _I don’t see how I’m going to become more inspired with cooking,_ he said at last, eyes roaming the coastline looking for a place to contemplate the mysteries of being a Jedi. (And not a particularly gifted one, either. Still not more suited to being a Sith Lord. He had that going for him, if nothing else.)

_Then let me help inspire you. Reach out to me next time you want to eat. We’ll work through the cooking process together._

Yuri blinked, focus turning inward. _Why would you do that?_ His head spun enough to make him sway before he caught himself against the _not very meditative_ rock he stood beside.

_No complicated reason. I’m curious if I can help turn those complaints into pleasantries. Everyone should enjoy what they’re eating, if they can._

Yuri agreed. Then he agreed with his thoughts, patted his robes back into order, and marched off to find a more contemplative stone to meditate upon.

So began the Voice’s mentorship of Yuri in the fine art of creative cooking.

Things were rocky at the start, with Yuri struggling to make the mental connection necessary; doing so deliberately caused him more trouble than doing so accidentally, to his consternation. Once he had that connection, the next challenge became sending visuals of what he was looking at in order to give the Voice an idea of what was on hand for Yuri to work with. Each day he managed the process more smoothly, until he didn’t require any meditation at all to establish the mental link with the Voice, whoever they were.

He should be more concerned about that, but he wasn’t. He was eating better, and a decent to well fed Katsuki Yuri was more productive, and more positive, than a Katsuki Yuri fed on over-charred fish for the nth night in a row. Yes, he still had to cook for himself, and yes, he was the only one eating what he made, but the Voice’s company and guidance was nice. Irritating sometimes, but those blunt edges they were encountering lost a little of their sharpness as the days stretched into weeks stretched into months.

Their conversations inevitably swung away from cooking alone, encompassing little of the current political climates through the Galaxy (and Universe at large, as Yuri thought of it), but anything in history, particularly in Jedi history, slowly came to the forefront.

Yuri and the Voice didn’t always agree. Yet when they didn’t, they still learned to listen, debate, and respect those differences in opinion, in no small part because shouting across a mental connection was much less cathartic than shouting in person, and subsequently, much harder to apologise about without feeling like an arse.

One of the subjects Yuri was perversely stubborn about at first dealt with the role of emotions in the Jedi Order. Keeping them under control, never allowing excesses of anything, living in a state of enforced calm, he argued for these things. The Voice agreed about control, but argued over the denial, claiming that it wasn’t about ignoring what was felt, but allow it to be felt. 

Hollowness was not blessedness. Feeling anger and letting it go was more powerful than using that anger as fuel. Feeling love and holding on to it wasn’t a weakness. There were other emotions, possessiveness, jealousy, insecurity, that drove people into bad places, and not all loves were good loves, usually because they were based on possessive loves, jealous loves, insecure loves, ones that wouldn’t allow for two hearts and two minds (or more, the Voice allowed, as there were certainly possibilities beyond the joining of just two) to remain separate, ones that demanded one submit to the other in every way.

The philosophical debates led back into questions concerning spices and reflecting on the nature of tinctures and stimulants drunk in various cultures across countless worlds, then would shift direction yet again to discuss the merit of natural fabric woven into blankets and synthetics woven to similar effect. Yuri lost some of his quiet reflection with the Voice’s potential companionship always a thought away, but he also found more peace and steadiness within himself. Enough to turn his eyes to the improbably well preserved books in the Library Tree and start thumbing through them.

Starting to disagree with some tenants of his own order, and agree yet again with others.

The Force felt more electric under his touch, even as it felt more comforting, and as Yuri refined himself and his understandings of a Universe so incredibly complex and vast compared to his own miniscule spark of consciousness… he also found a certain contentedness.

And meals, delicious meals, he never thought he’d have been responsible for.

 _Are you happy?_ The Voice asked one morning, as the porgs cried out and barrel rolled around each other, caught up in the frenzy of their mating dances in the leaden grey skies overhead.

Yuri paused, in the middle of stretching before starting in on his lightsaber work that morning, just out of cutting distance from the porgs. Was he happy? _Yes_ , he said eventually, a smile pulling up the corners of his lips, _I think I am_.

“That’s great,” he heard someone call out to him, speaking in Galactic Standard, “You had me worried about that for a while there.”

Yuri spun around, lightsaber holstered at his side, one hand thrown out in front of him as if to reach for and also deny the existence he now sensed. Those words were seamless when attached to the question about his happiness, but it had to be coincidental.

Had to be, because the man walking up the rocky slope, meandering along the narrow dirt pathways upward, with his shock of silver hair and the traditional Jedi Order robes, was Jedi Master Victor Nikiforov.

The Jedi Master who’d been missing the last five years.

The missing Jedi Master who was smiling up at Yuri with inexplicable fondness.

Yuri turned around to see who could be behind him, only to spot a porg who’d wandered closer. Ah, well. Porgs were cute, he wouldn’t deny Victor that much. At least the man had taste.

“Do you know how difficult it is to track through a Force connection opened only a few times a day?” Victor called out, cupping his hands to his mouth and forcing Yuri to turn back and stare down at him. He heard every third word, the rest stolen away by the wind.

“What? Do I know how the Force opened today?” Yuri’s brow furrowed. The porg behind him squawked. “What do you mean, the Force opened today?”

Victor, who also heard only a portion of what Yuri said, cocked his head to the side, trying to understand what he’d caught. “You’re not open today? I didn’t think you ran a restaurant here, and temples never really close...”

Victor continued making his way up while Yuri bit down on his lower lip. He should probably run now. Or spontaneously become a better Jedi. Or both. Both would be ideal. Yuri turned around, intent on walking further up the hillside to head back toward his second favourite meditation rock when the familiar touch of the Voice brushed against his mind.

_You aren’t even a little bit glad to see me? Here I’d finally managed to track you down so you could follow through on your promises to cook a meal for me if we ever met, and all that after putting aside your beamed request for guidance after last years conference…_

Yuri came to an abrupt stop, a chill traveling up his spine. He spun back around, hands out to either side, mouth dropped open. “You’re the Master Chef?” _And I beamed what to who?_ He both spoke and thought the words at the same time.

From where he stood downslope, Victor grinned, waving cheerily up at Yuri. _Is that what you called me? Then I guess I am your Master Chef Jedi. Are you still running away?_

Yuri almost responded with a truthful yes when instead he was treated to the rare sight of a porg dive-bombing a Jedi Master.

Porgs loved shiny things, and unfortunately for Victor Nikiforov, Jedi Master, his hair practically shined in the current light. Victor threw up an arm and caught the diving porg like a ball, both of them sent tumbling a few meters back before coming to a stop against a polite, mossy rock.

Yuri kept staring, dumbfounded and concerned, shaking his head and barreling down the slope with his robes flying, lightsaber thunking against his thigh, and small stones skidding underfoot as he tried not to laugh. Sliding to a stop next to the prone Victor still holding his porg assailant in his arms. Victor cast him a baleful look followed by a sheepish smile while Yuri sank down to his knees, no longer able to keep himself standing.

“In all my unintentional complaints,” Yuri said, finding his lips pulled up into an answering smile, “Did I ever mention the porgs?”

Victor glanced at the now content porg held in his arms. “No,” he said with a bit of a wheeze. “No, I don’t think you did. They’re kind of cute.”

“They’ll steal your lightsaber.”

“... Really?”

“Really.” Yuri reached out to lift the porg out of Victor’s arms, setting it to the side. “They can even activate it, too.” He stood, offering Victor a hand to pull him back up to his feet.

Victor accepted, one hand patting dirt off his backside as he regarded Yuri from up close. “How’d you find that one out?”

“The same way I found out porg is perfectly edible, if you can stand killing something with that face.”

Both men turned to look at the porg that’d dive-bombed Victor in unison. The porg looked back, blinking its giant brown eyes before warghing and flapping its stubby wings.

“Wow,” Victor said, his blue eyes brightening like the sky at sunrise, “ _Amazing._ ”


End file.
